After reading the big spoilers at the Fuselage for next episode I think the answers we got last week will make more sense, and will probably make those questions we wish we had answers for seem not so important.
I tried to register for that website, clicked on User CP, joined the spoiler group page, did the hokey pokey, ate a box of Dharma Flakes… and the folder is empty. (!) Too confusing!
If you got any info on how to READ it at Fuselage, please let me know. 
I’d be interested in reading this too.
But if Fuselage is, as it says, the official site of the LOST creative team, then I am really surprised if there are genuine spoilers there!
Well, you have to register, then add yourself to the spoiler group, and then go into the spoiler group. It took me about 20 minutes to do it all.
If you don’t want to go through all of that, here’s the full synopsis of Tuesday’s episode double-spoilered for your protection.
[spoiler][spoiler]
Sideways Jack wakes up with the familiar blood stain on his neck and goes to eat breakfast with David. David makes sure Jack is going to his concert that night and Jack says he would be and inquires if David’s mom will be there. Jack gets contacted by Oceanic telling him his father’s casket was located, but it turns out it’s actually Desmond on the phone. On the island, Jack patches up Kate’s shoulder and Kate laments that Locke killed Jin and Sun and that they have a daughter, one that Jin will now never see. Kate says that they have to kill Locke and Jack agrees. Jack says that if Locke wants Desmond, they need to get to him first and they (Kate, Jack, Hurley and Sawyer) head off to the well to retrieve him. In sideways world, Desmond watches from his car as Locke gets out of his van; his first day back at school after being run down. In a similar situation Des starts the car and seems poised to run Locke down again until Ben interrupts him and stops him. Des gets out and says he wasn’t trying to hurt Locke, but help him. Ben asks how and Des starts punching him; at which time Ben begins to have flashes of his “other” life. On the mend in the nurses office, Locke arrives to check on Ben and Ben tells him the story as Locke calls the police. Ben stops him and says that he believes Desmond when he said he was trying to help. Alex meets up with Ben outside the school and invites to drive him home with her mom. At first Ben declines, but then a “cleaned up and non crazy” Rousseau insists. Back at their house after dinner, Ben asks Danielle what happened to Alex’s father. She says he died when she was 2 and muses that is why Alex has taken to Ben so much; he has an interest in her and believes in her and is the father she never had. Ben gets misty from hearing this.
Back on the island, Richard, Miles and Ben are heading to Ben’s house to get his stash of C4 to blow up the plane. While there, Zoe and Widmore arrive. Widmore explains that after the freighter was blown up, Jacob visited him and explained what he must do. Widmore orders Zoe to go sink their boat and she leaves. Widmore explains that he brought Desmond to the island because of his immunity to electromagnetism. Zoe calls up on the walkie explaining that Locke has arrived on the island. Widmore orders her to return and when she is on her way Widmore says they all need to hide in Ben’s closet. Miles leaves on his own while Ben and Richard decide to confront Locke; thinking they can either buy time or get him to leave. With Widmore and Zoe in the closet walk outside. The black smoke slams into Richard and tosses him into the woods. Ben sits and Locke approaches and says that there are some people he’d like Ben to kill and in exchange, Ben can have control of the island after Locke leaves. Ben accepts and tells him that Widmore and Zoe are in his closet. Locke promptly slices Zoe’s throat and tells Widmore that if he tells him what he wants to know he won’t kill penny when he leaves the island. At first Widmore doesn’t seem to trust him, but relents and tells him of Desmond. When Locke asks why Desmond, Widmore doesn’t want Ben to hear. Ben turns around and he whispers inaudibly into Locke’s ear. Suddenly Widmore is shot numerous times by Ben, with Ben explaining that he (Widmore) “Shouldn’t have the opportunity to save his daughter” and then asks Locke if there are others he wants him to kill.
In the woods, young Jacob appears to Hurley and demands his ashes from Hurley. He takes them and runs away and Hurley gives chase, and comes upon adult Jacob in the woods around a campfire. Hurley brings Jack, Kate and Sawyer to Jacob, who they can now see and communicate with. Jacob explains that he made a mistake when his actions made his brother into the smoke monster and he knew that eventually he’d find a way to kill him; so the candidates have been his preparations for his eventual demise. And that protecting the island is what the others “have all died for.” He says that he must have a successor before the fire burns out; once it does, he is gone for good and “it would be very bad” if there isn’t someone to take his place. Sawyer complains that his life was fine before Jacob brought them there, but Jacob interjects that they were all lost, lonely and broken, like he was. Kate asks why she was crossed out and Jacob explains that it’s “just chalk on a wall, he crossed her out because she became a mother and the job is still open if she wants it”. No one accepts at first, until Jack stands and says this is what he was meant to do and accepts the “job”. Jacob explains that the light is the heart of the island and is what must be protected from extinguishing; which is what MIB wants to do. Jack asks if they’re supposed to kill him (MIB) and Jacob says that he hopes they can. Jacob gets a cup from Jack, says a “prayer” to the water and gives it to Jack to drink; when he does, Jacob says “Now we are the same”.
In sideways world, Locke goes to Jack and explains that maybe fate is what cause his accident and maybe Jack is supposed to fix his spine. Jack accepts (after the uttering of a few familiar phrases).
On the island, Locke and Ben reach the well to see that Des is not there. Ben asks what it was that Widmore said to him about Desmond. He says that Des was Jacob’s “Failsafe” in case all of his candidates were killed; but that Desmond will be useful to Locke now because Desmond can do what Locke has never been able to do, “Destroy the island”.
LOST
- Ben kills Widmore. Locke tells widmore if you tell me why you brought desmond then i wont kill your daughter. ben shots widmore because he said his daughter doesnt get to live.
- Locke kills Zoe. Slices her throat
- Jacob explains why he chose the candidates. and why kate isnt one.
- Jacob becomes visible to the 4 remaining candidates including Kate and explains this to them directly
- Jack becomes Jacob’s replacement. Including a ritual where Jack drinks from a stream and Jacob says “now we are the same”
- Sayid didn’t kill Desmond. all we see is an empty well with a rope
- Desmond beats up Ben in flash-sideways. Desmond beats up Ben and Ben has a flash of when he got beat in the OTM
- Locke wants Jack to fix his spine in flash-sideways. yes after he realizes this might be fate. and jack says the lines dont mistake coincidence with fate.
- Desmond turns himself in for running over Locke. Then breaks Sayid and
- Kate out of jail with the help of Ana Lucia and Hurley.
- Desmond is getting all the Oceanic 815ers to congregate at the concert.
- Richard gets slammed by the smoke, I would be shocked if he were alive
- Ben is following Flocke around after this, seems aligned with him
- Widmore reveals the purpose of Desmond, part of it is whispered to Flocke, the word “failsafe” is used
- Flocke announces his intention to “destroy the island”[/spoiler][/spoiler]
Huh.
I’m really amazed that there would be such substantive plot spoilers at an official site. How do they even keep this stuff from becoming much more public knowledge?
Anyway, I like this bit
[spoiler]
“It’s just chalk on a wall.” I think some people might find this to be someho cop-out-y, or something, but I think it lends a needed human and fallible element to the whole story. The reason for the cross-out wasn’t some supernatural necessity as it may have seemed, but one guy deciding out of his own character to take pity on someone. Nice.[/spoiler]
What is unexplained about Dharma? They were a group that came to study the island and were eventually killed by the others.
Female sterility hasn’t been explained yet, and I suspect it will be.
Waaalt was one of the special folks. Like Desmond or Locke, I don’t know what you need to hear there.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, as I was not implying that this had anything to do with how the show first got going. Rather, it could be a resolution that the writers thought up in the last few seasons that more or less fits in with what we know from earlier seasons.
There are. There have been for as long as I’ve been registered in the first season. It’s that blogger that has inside info. Usually we don’t get such major spoilers until the day of the show, but sometimes it comes early. Sometimes there are foilers but usually this one guy gets the facts. I’m glad I did this time because it did clear some things up about Jacob.
And thank you** stpauler**. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to post it, even in spoiler boxes.
I don’t know if it has been mentioned before in this thread, but I’m starting to see a pattern with this episode where it looks like no one knows any answers.
At first we thought Desmond had some answers. It turned out that Desmond had no clue about what was going on.
Next we then found out Ben was the leader of the others and thought Ben knew everything about the island. It turned out that Ben knew nothing about the island.
Richard? Just as clueless as everyone else. Same goes for Dogen. Jacob made a deal with them some time ago and they have been following hm blindly ever since.
Now everyone thought that at least either Jacob or MIB would definitely have the answers. Nope. MIB might have figured out a few things since he was turned into the smoke monster, but we found out the Jacob wasn’t told anything when he was asked to protect the island. He’s just as clueless as Richard and Dogen - blindly protecting the island because the previous protector of the island asked him to.
I’m beginning to think that no one knows what is going on, not even MIB. If we had a flash back to Jacob’s mother we would realize that she has no clue what she’s protecting either. And whenever someone comes close to figuring out the mystery of the island, (pre-smokey MIB, Dharma initiative) someone decides to kill them all.
Unfortunately, this pattern seems to include the writers. 
Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. The best explanation I’ve seen, apart from the “Well, they had a polar bear handy” one, is that if they knew that turning the wheel (or whatever they did… I’m not sure there’s any evidence that they did any experiments apart from those in the Vault), a polar bear would be easier to track down when it randomly popped up in the world than a donkey.
On the other hand, the polar bear corpse implies that DHARMA moved the Island at least once and that definitely gives the Others a darned good motive for the Purge.
Yeah, I actually agree with you, and that was precisely my point. My apologies if I implied that you were arguing that the Jacob stuff was there from the beginning, as that wasn’t my intent.
The Jacob/MIB conflict was a mid show addition that’s intended to tie together the somewhat scattershot mythology that was introduced prior to season three as well what we’ve seen since then. I think it’s a good idea and they could still pull it off if there is something of an endgame at play.
Smokey obviously wants off the island, but what did Jacob want? He’s the islands protector yes and he’s trying to prevent Smokey from escaping, but the line about “it only ends once”, seems to imply he has some grander scheme in mind that the Losties are playing into. Something beyond finding a replacement to take his place. He wants to end this little game he’s been playing with Smokey for two millenia now. Sinking the island to prevent other people form exploring/exploiting it actually makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t require Jacob to actually know a great deal about the island’s nature and it seems to fit his characterization at this point.
I know I went off on a tangent again about Jacob in my reply but that honestly had nothing to do with what you posted John. I just have a thing stuck in my craw at this point concerning what they did with the character in “Across the Sea”, as I thought it undermined him a great deal, and increased my sympathy for Smokey ironically enough. I shouldn’t have used your post as a jumping off point for that.
What I was getting at, regarding the question you asked “Is there something about this?”, is that we really don’t know because we still don’t know what Jacob’s ultimate goal is. At this point in time, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not. I actually thought we would get that answer in this episode but it didn’t happen. I’m still holding out hope that we’ll receive some more information regarding his motivations at some point.
There’s a lot of speculation that the ATL is the “real world” and the crash timeline is an aberration. If that’s the case then Jacob wanting the island sunk actually makes a lot of sense.
I think the writers wanted to increase our sympathy for Smokey. No irony there. In fact, they’ve been playing with us for a long time about who are the “good” guys and who are the “not good” guys. This wasn’t the first time they tried to make things ambiguous even about Jacob and MIB.
That’s a good point. The ambiguity of the characters has been a theme throughout the shows run.
After watching Smokey attempt to kill the remaining Losties though, (minus Desmond and Claire), and actually getting four of them I didn’t think I could feel any sympathy for him personally. I have to admit that actually impresses me.
“Hi Oceanic 815 survivors. We’re DHARMA and he’s Greg.” <snickers> “That’s just a little joke. Hey, if you ever want to watch some home movies about what we do here that would be great. And if you ever need to borrow something like a cup of sugar or a polar bear, just ask the guys in the hatch.”
Really?! You honestly believe that DHARMA was originally meant to be some sort of supporting character to convince us the Island was “complicated” and give the Losties a place to sleep as they travel through time?
That paraphrase has nothing to do with the quoted passage you seem to be trying to paraphrase.
How did they find the island in the first place? Why did they think it needed studying, out of all the islands in the world? Who was bankrolling them?
On a second reading, I guess what you’re saying is you think the writers had a different idea about the nature of Dharma to begin with, and the stuff that happened later in the series wasn’t in keeping with the way they had set it up?
I don’t know about Saint Cad but I’m 100% certain that this is the case.
There’s no way to reconcile the Dharma of the first two, three seasons with the useless hippies of season 5*. And frankly, the deep, dark, mysterious Dharma was a much better mystery than The Smoke Monster and his Brother Play Backgammon.
*How’d those guys figure out that sonics would hold Smokey back? As quickly as he can massacre huge amounts of people, there wouldn’t have been time to build the pylons.
For that matter, how’d the…say…100? 150? people on the Island build The Looking Glass?
Why did they spend time having people pushing The Button when the only consequence to not pushing it is that The Hatch implodes and the island becomes visible for a few seconds? (I think)
Why was the word “Quarrantine” left on the doors of a bunch of the stations? (Per Lostpedia, at least on The Arrow and The Swan)